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Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

newscientist.com

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Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#91

Post by icelancer »

sitkack wrote: post #70

While we are at it, lets change the format from .pdf to .zip to include source, data and other information that a hypothesis and test and resulting analysis can encompass. First step is to put the pdf into the zip and have existing tools be able to navigate the hierarchy. Could include notebooks, bibtex, tex, data, images, etc. And semantic scholar is in exactly the right place to institute this evolution.

The OA community - particularly PeerJ - has solved this problem by forcing you to upload supplementary data either to their website (if it's small enough) or to Figshare, which does not allow you to delete data once it is uploaded and paired to a research study. It works rather well.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#92

Post by mirimir »

elvinyung wrote: post #72

Here's a Twitter thread with a director at Elsevier (@mrgunn) making extremely snarky comments about why they think academia shouldn't be free and widely available: https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600

    Shiran Pasternak
‏ @gingi0 Aug 13 Replying to @dgmacarthur

    What is a reasonable profit margin for a platform for communicating publicly
    funded research? Non-rhetorical question.

    mrgunn
‏ @mrgunn Aug 13

    For a publicly traded company, the answer is "what the market will bear".
Wow.

Krista Jamieson offers a great perspective.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#93

Post by blazespin »

elvinyung wrote: post #72

Here's a Twitter thread with a director at Elsevier (@mrgunn) making extremely snarky comments about why they think academia shouldn't be free and widely available: https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600

The real problem is that these publishers actually provide real value that gives them leverage over the industry. If they didn't, it'd be pretty easy to destroy their grip over academia. The idea that after 23 years of internet they've maintained their position via smart deals is ludicrous. They've maintained it because of useful curation.

If there was a way to open source curation and not lose quality, I can't imagine anyone would disagree with that - even the people who work at these organisations.

Unfortunately, what you end up with is arxiv, while very useful for sure, has no curation.

Everyone just keeps bleeting - we want free! But they don't bother to think about how to do actually do it. How to ensure quality curation remains which is absolutely so critical to the advancement of science.

I've been fantasizing about free everything since forever. Who hasn't? But at some point we have to stop trying to fantasize our way to results.

This is like underpants gnomes logic - steal underpants .. .. .. .. quality curation!

Also, MrGunn is a moron commenting on that thread. Why not just hand out free subscriptions to rare disease patients? What a trivially cost less PR move.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#94

Post by thoughtexplorer »

> HERE is a trivia question for you: what is the most profitable business in the world? You might think oil, or maybe banking. You would be wrong. The answer is academic publishing. Its profit margins are vast, reportedly in the region of 40 per cent.

Interesting. Does anyone know what the volume is like?

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#95

Post by mirimir »

blazespin wrote: post #93
elvinyung wrote: post #72

Here's a Twitter thread with a director at Elsevier (@mrgunn) making extremely snarky comments about why they think academia shouldn't be free and widely available: https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600

The real problem is that these publishers actually provide real value that gives them leverage over the industry. If they didn't, it'd be pretty easy to destroy their grip over academia. The idea that after 23 years of internet they've maintained their position via smart deals is ludicrous. They've maintained it because of useful curation. If there was a way to open source curation and not lose quality, I can't imagi…

We had curation before we had commercial academic publishers. Professional societies handled it. Publishers just did the physical publishing, and didn't get copyright.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#96

Post by jamesrcole »

blazespin wrote: post #93
elvinyung wrote: post #72

Here's a Twitter thread with a director at Elsevier (@mrgunn) making extremely snarky comments about why they think academia shouldn't be free and widely available: https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600

The real problem is that these publishers actually provide real value that gives them leverage over the industry. If they didn't, it'd be pretty easy to destroy their grip over academia. The idea that after 23 years of internet they've maintained their position via smart deals is ludicrous. They've maintained it because of useful curation. If there was a way to open source curation and not lose quality, I can't imagi…

> these publishers actually provide real value ... If they didn't, it'd be pretty easy to destroy their grip over academia.

Your argument equates to "they have maintained their grip, therefore they're providing real value".

Their stranglehold seems to come primarily from academic incentives to publish in prestigious journals.

> The idea that after 23 years of internet they've maintained their position via smart deals is ludicrous.

Perhaps someone has claimed that, but I don't recall ever seeing that argument.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#97

Post by FiveSquared »

blazespin wrote: post #93
elvinyung wrote: post #72

Here's a Twitter thread with a director at Elsevier (@mrgunn) making extremely snarky comments about why they think academia shouldn't be free and widely available: https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600

The real problem is that these publishers actually provide real value that gives them leverage over the industry. If they didn't, it'd be pretty easy to destroy their grip over academia. The idea that after 23 years of internet they've maintained their position via smart deals is ludicrous. They've maintained it because of useful curation. If there was a way to open source curation and not lose quality, I can't imagi…

Scihub exists you know. There is! Volunteering,. fed grants, and donations. You even said it yourself that it was useful. Wikipedia is a great example of how to open source info. Also, ATTACK THE ARGUMENT, NOT THE PERSON!

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#98

Post by QML »

avs733 wrote: post #55
QML wrote: post #53

Why don't people just publish through Arxiv? Is there not a discussion forum where people can post, discover, and comment on new papers? If you know of one for CS, do comment.

because while that might make sense at the field level, it relies on scholars getting credit for that work, which few do.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by scholars getting credit for their work?

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#99

Post by mabbo »

elvinyung wrote: post #72

Here's a Twitter thread with a director at Elsevier (@mrgunn) making extremely snarky comments about why they think academia shouldn't be free and widely available: https://twitter.com/dgmacarthur/status/1028489457803161600

What did you expect? I'm not saying that the guy is or isn't a horrible monster, but if he had ethical qualms with what Elsevier does or how it operates, he would have either changed it or left.

The same goes for everyone who works there. They have either found a way to justify that what they do is ethical and okay, or would quit. That's just human nature.

Re: Time to break academic publishing's stranglehold on research

#100

Post by Ericson2314 »

sitkack wrote: post #78
dharmab wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a machine proof check a psychology study? Or a drug trial?

open question! :) We could at least have the data and the statistical analysis (code) accompany the paper.

Yes a fat table, a big proof, and some marginalia which is wonderful pure humanities.
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